Earnings Labs

Royalty Pharma plc (RPRX)

Q2 2023 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 8, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Royalty Pharma second quarter earnings conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to George Grofik, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

George Grofik

Management

Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us to review Royalty Pharma’s second quarter 2023 results. You can find a press release with our earnings results and slides for this call on the Investors page of our website at royaltypharma.com. Moving to Slide 3, I would like to remind you that information presented in this call contains forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. I refer to our 10-Q on file with the SEC for a description of these risks. All forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to Royalty Pharma and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help you understand our financial performance. The GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations are provided in the earnings press release available on our website. With that, please advance to Slide 4. Our speakers on the call today are Pablo Legorreta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Marshall Urist, EVP, Head of Research and Investment, and Terry Coyne, EVP and Chief Financial Officer. Pablo will discuss a few highlights, Marshall will then provide a portfolio update, after which Terry will review the financials. Following concluding remarks from Pablo, we will hold a Q&A session when we will be joined by Chris Hite, EVP and Vice Chairman. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Pablo.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Thank you George, and welcome to everyone on the call. I am delighted to report another solid quarter of execution against our strategy as the leading funder of innovation in life sciences. Slide 6 summarizes our financial achievements in the second quarter, which again demonstrates our strong momentum and the power of our business model. First, we delivered solid financial performance prior to the Biohaven-related payment we received in the second quarter of 2022 adjusted cash receipts. Our top line grew by 7%, adjusted EBITDA by 6%, and adjusted cash flow grew by 9%. Second on capital allocation, year to date we announced royalty acquisitions of up to $1.7 billion, including $659 million in upfront payments. We also initiated our $1 billion multi-year share repurchase program. As of last night’s close, we have repurchased approximately 6 million shares for a total spend of about $185 million. Third, we’re raising our full year guidance for adjusted cash receipts to between $2.9 billion and $2.975 billion. Our guidance reflects expected underlying growth from our portfolio of between 6% and 10% prior to the Biohaven-related payments. Consistent with our standard practice, our guidance is based on our current portfolio and does not include the benefit of any future acquisitions this year. On Slide 7, you can see our financials in more detail. We delivered 7% growth in our top line prior to the Biohaven-related payment in the prior period and 4% if we include this payment. Foreign exchange continued to represent a headwind, impacting our top line by around minus-1% to minus-3% in the quarter. If we also adjust for foreign exchange impact, we would have delivered approximately 9% top line growth in the quarter, underscoring the strong underlying momentum in the business. Similar to our top line, we grew our adjusted EBITDA by 6% in the quarter prior to the Biohaven-related payment and 4% including this payment. Adjusted EBITDA is an important non-GAAP measure for us, which is arrived at by deducting payments for operating and professional costs from our top line. Lastly, our adjusted cash flow, our bottom line, grew by 9% in the quarter prior to the Biohaven adjusted payment and 6% including this payment. Slide 8 shows our impressive track record of strong top line growth since our IPO in June of 2020. Despite foreign exchange headwinds and losses of exclusivity, we delivered 9% growth prior to the Biohaven-related payment in the first quarter of 2023. This reflects our ability to consistently execute against our strategy. With that, I will hand it over to Marshall to update you on our portfolio performance.

Marshall Urist

Management

Thanks Pablo. Consistent with the variable timing of our opportunities, this was a relatively quiet quarter in terms of new additions to the portfolio. We did make a small investment to acquire incremental royalties from UCLA on J&J’s prostate cancer therapy, Erleada, which is already a part of our oncology portfolio. Our team remains incredibly busy as we continue to have an active and robust pipeline with a consistent mix of approved and unapproved products and preexisting and synthetic royalties across a wide variety of therapeutic areas. But today, I want to focus on the potential impact of the Inflation Reduction Act as we approach the announcement by CMS of the initial list of 10 drugs to be selected for 2026 price determination that is expected by September 1. Moving to Slide 10, as we’ve discussed previously with many of you, there are three Medicare Part D drugs in our portfolio which we expect to be subject to IRA price concessions over the 2026 to 2027 period, namely Xtandi, Imbruvica, and Trelegy; however, based on the specific dynamics of each of these three Part D medicines, we calculate the impact from the IRA to adjusted cash receipts to be in the low single digit percentage range for 2026 with an even lower portfolio NPV impact. Taking these in turn, Xtandi loses exclusivity in 2027, as we have indicated previously, so we face only around 1.5 years of exposure to additional price concessions. In the case of Imbruvica, as you are all aware, competition is driving sales erosion and it is likely to represent a substantially smaller portion of our royalty receipts by 2026 than it does today. Lastly on Trelegy, which could be impacted in 2027, we note the product is already highly rebated and thus the additional price impact from IRA may prove more modest. Furthermore, although not factored into our IRA impact analysis, increased utilization could help to offset potential pricing pressure, and as a reminder, we do not have any meaningful exposure to therapies in Medicare Part B that will be selected for IRA price determination. Now taking a step back, on a strategic level in this IRA era, we remain in a very strong position given the many unique attributes of our business model. Our unique therapeutic area and modality-agnostic approach affords us broad strategic flexibility to focus our attention on the most attractive opportunities in those therapies for which we see the highest levels of innovation, patient need and commercial opportunity. Moreover, given our flexibility, we are already reflecting the potential impact of IRA in the valuation and investment structure of new royalties we may acquire. With that, I’ll hand it over to Terry.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Thanks Marshall. Let’s move to Slide 12. Total royalty receipts grew 1% in the second quarter versus the year ago period. Excluding the Biohaven-related payment in the prior year period, royalty receipts grew approximately 3%. The increase was mainly due to the strong performance of the cystic fibrosis franchise and the addition of royalties on Trelegy and Spinraza. We also saw growth contributions from most of our other key royalties, including double-digit increases from Promacta, Tremfya, Cabometyx, Evrysdi, and Trodelvy. These positive factors were partially offset by the loss of the DPP4 royalties, weakness in Imbruvica and Tysabri, and adverse currency movements. In addition, our royalty on Xtandi faced a high base of comparison due to a true-up in the prior year period. Turning to adjusted cash receipts, Slide 13 provides a deeper dive into our top line performance in the quarter to show the various moving parts. The solid performance of our base business and the acquisition of Spinraza royalties allowed us to deliver 7% top line growth before taking into account the impact of the prior period Biohaven-related payment. Royalty expiries and foreign exchange represented a combined headwind to growth of around minus-6% to minus-8%. Slide 14 shows how our efficient business model generates substantial cash flow to be redeployed. As you’re aware, adjusted cash receipts is a key non-GAAP metric for us which we arrive at after deducting distributions to non-controlling interests. This amounted to $545 million in the quarter or growth of 4% compared with last year’s second quarter. As I just noted, adjusting for the prior period Biohaven-related payment, growth would have been 7% in the quarter. Operating and professional costs were approximately 9% of adjusted cash receipts in the quarter. As a result, we reported 4% growth in adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, broadly…

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Thanks Terry. Let me start by concluding remarks by saying how pleased I am with our continued strong execution against our strategic priorities in 2023. We’re well on track not only to deliver our raised guidance for the full year but to drive shareholder value creation and transform patients’ lives globally. On Slide 22, I want to highlight an important event in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that took place in the quarter and underscores our role in advancing the healthcare ecosystem. In June, we sponsored our third annual Accelerating by Innovation conference. This year’s ABI conference at MIT follows similar conferences we organized at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 2019 and 2022. The aim of this unique conference is to facilitate discussions on translational sciences and drug development and to connect diverse parties in the biopharma ecosystem. This year, we had a tremendous turnout of 280 life sciences executives, including 76 CEOs, 80 scientists, and three Nobel laureates. The audience was balanced between industry and academia and had a strong representation of both U.S. and ex-U.S. participants, as well as finance professionals including many leading VC firms. The feedback we received from the conference was uniformly positive and sets Royalty Pharma up well for future dialogue with many of the innovators in attendance. In short, this unique conference is another example of our win-win approach and keeps us front of mind for those seeking a partner to fund their innovation. To finish on Slide 23, we just passed the third anniversary of our June 2020 IPO, and I would like to take a moment to highlight our significant accomplishments since then. First, we delivered significant growth. If we set aside the Biohaven-related payments, our raised top line guidance for 2023 is around 35%…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] The first question comes from Chris Shibutani with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Chris Shibutani

Analyst

Thank you very much. Good morning. Appreciated the very thorough and thoughtful discussion of two issues which have been debated amongst investors on the triple combination. Vertex, during their recent call, said that they viewed the difference in the royalty potential as substantially lower, which you outline is the difference between potentially 8% versus the worst case of 4%, the 4% difference. Is there any dispute over the actual royalty levels and the magnitude of the difference in those scenarios? Then on the IRA, could you help us understand, since we’re on the verge of 12 months ahead, understanding better how implementation will occur, what ranges of price discounts you factored in, in order to extrapolate your exposure risk, just for some perspective? That would be helpful, thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Thank you Chris. Terry’s going to take your question on the triple, the CF triple, and then Marshall will address your question on the IRA.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Yes, so Chris, when you look at the rates that we described on the page, there’s no debate about the rate on Trikafta. The only question is do we get the--and that’s all based on the contract. The only question is are we entitled to royalties on the deuterated ivacaftor component. If we are and they’re the same as the ivacaftor component, then we think that the royalty will be 8%, and if we are not correct and ultimately we would only receive royalties on the tezacaftor component, so the royalty would be 4%, so those are sort of the bookends that we laid out there.

Marshall Urist

Management

Great. Hi Chris, good morning. On your second question on IRA, just at a high level, we took, I think, a broad approach in terms of looking at different scenarios, and without getting into numbers specifically, we did take what I think we all feel like is a pretty conservative view in terms of what the price reductions related to IRA might be, and so wanted to cover, I think again, a wide range of scenarios there. The other part of your question was on implementation. I think we’re all watching and trying to understand how all that is going to work out. There’s obviously lots of moving pieces there in terms of benefit structure and how formularies change once the negotiated price products are available at that price, so I think there is a lot to watch and a lot to learn, but we did take a pretty conservative view and wanted to provide everyone some guidance and thoughts on what it might mean for Royalty Pharma.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Chris, one thing I’d suggest you may want to do is go to the appendix on Slide 27. We laid out in greater detail the calculations of our royalties on the cystic fibrosis franchise, depending on these different scenarios, so that’s maybe something that would be helpful in your analysis and forecasts.

Chris Shibutani

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Chris Schott with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hardik Parekh

Analyst · JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Hardik Parekh in for Chris Schott. Just a quick question on the immunology space. We’ve seen a strong focus there in recent acquisitions in the pharma space, and I know you already have exposure to Tremfya but how are you thinking about additional exposure the immunology space? How do you see that opportunity for Royalty Pharma? Thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Sure. Marshall, why don’t you take that question?

Marshall Urist

Management

Yes, of course. Thanks for the question. You point out it is today an important focus for us with Tremfya and has been historically. As many of you know, we have a long history in this space with the T&Fs all the way back to the beginning. We are watching all of the developments in this space in terms of new market and in terms of oral opportunities against some of the targets in this space, and continue to look for great opportunities there. I think we are really excited to have Tremfya as a part of the portfolio when we see what it’s doing in psoriasis and with inflammatory bowel disease to come, backed by a greater marketer in J&J and exactly the kind of high quality products in large growth markets that we’re looking to add to the portfolio.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Geoff Meacham with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Geoff Meacham

Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hey guys, thanks for the question. I just had two. The first is for Terry, so super helpful math for CF - I really appreciate that. I know you’re not going to go into legal strategy, but can you talk about just the timing of when we could get some resolution - you know, does the discussion with Vertex start when vanzacaftor launches, or can there be anything resolved before? The second question, Marshall, on Slide 29 you guys show the royalty pipeline. I note today there’s a strong contribution from rare disease, but going forward, it doesn’t look like that. I wasn’t sure if this was an intentional strategy and you guys are emphasizing maybe broader markets or bigger deals going forward, or if that was just the way it played out. Thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Thanks for your question, Geoff. Terry, why don’t you just elaborate on the first part of his question, and then Marshall, you can go ahead and talk about the pipeline.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Sure Geoff. In terms of timing, we totally understand that investors want to understand the timing. The first card to turn over will be the actual data, which we’ll see in early 2024, but beyond that, we really--you know, at this point, it’s just difficult for us to elaborate on any specifics around timing, but we obviously--the critical question is what does this drug look like and is it something that could be approved and competitive with Trikafta.

Marshall Urist

Management

Hi Geoff, good morning. On your second question on the pipeline with respect to orphan disease, nothing there in terms of any strategic change or shift or focus. The orphan space remains a place where we continue to look at opportunities and be active, and I’d just make two comments. One is just to remind you, we did a deal for an orphan product with Spinraza at the very beginning of this year, so it remains really central to our strategy and opportunities that we’re considering. But again, just a reminder, the strategy remains to look at all--look broadly at all opportunities and therapeutic areas to find the most exciting and actionable opportunities in front of us, and that’s our strategy. That means sometimes we might be a little bit more active in one space at one point in time and a little less active, but when you look over a longer period, I think covering the whole waterfront remains the core strategy.

Geoff Meacham

Analyst · Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Terence Flynn with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Terence Flynn

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great, thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe two for me. Just wondering how you’re thinking about share repurchases from here. Obviously saw some activity in the first half of the year, but just how should we think about that on the forward? Then apologize if I missed this, but Terry, just in terms of the vanzacaftor profile that you assume in your 50% to 75% conversion scenario, can you give us your thoughts on that that assumes in terms of FEV and sweat chloride? Thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Sure, thank you Terence. Maybe just very top level about the share repurchase program, it’s obvious to us when we look at the fundamentals of this business, whether you look at it on a DCF basis or multiple bases, that we believe that at these levels, the stock is a very attractive purchase. As a result of that, we launched this billion dollar share repurchase program where Royalty Pharma will be buying shares over time, and as you saw, we acquired $185 million through last night. Personally, I’ve decided also to purchase shares at these levels and have done so, on a smaller scale but a meaningful amount for me given the fact that I own already so much of the stock, but I have been very active also acquiring shares. We’re going to continue, but we think that this is obviously a very attractive purchase at these levels. Terry, do you want to add anything else about the share repurchase program, and then Marshall will talk about the other part of your question.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Yes, the only thing I would add is we think--you know, it will continue to be a balanced approach. Our number one priority, and this has not changed, is to buy royalties, and that’s going to be the number one use of capital. But when we see an opportunity to return capital to shareholders at what we view as extremely attractive prices, we think that’s also a nice tool that we can have in the tool kit, and we think it’s a great way to create some additional value for shareholders. Then Terence, to your question on our assumptions for this new triple and the clinical profile, we looked at--we obviously considered a range of scenarios. We’ve followed this space for a really long time, we made our first investment here. Pablo made the first investment in CF 25 years ago, so we know the space really well. I think our view is in order to get to that 75% type share scenario, our view is that the new triple would need to be meaningfully better than Trikafta on both sweat chloride and FEV1. We’ll have to wait and see. That’s why we wanted to kind of take the debate off the table by showing what it could look like if that does end up being the case, and as you can see, if 75% of patients were to switch, it’s still very consistent with the top line adjusted cash receipts that we’re going to record this year from CF, so there isn’t really--you know, there seems to be this perception that the downside was really significant, that somehow this franchise was going away, and that’s just not the case, as the analysis that we showed today demonstrates.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

I think what Terry meant was--I don’t know if it was totally clear or not, Terence, but this year we’re going to record about $700 million from our investment in CF, and in the downside scenario it’s $600 million to $700 million by 2030, so it’s very similar. But there is obviously scenarios where this could be higher, as we highlighted, so there’s even some potential upside for us from the current levels. Even assuming a 75% switch or other assumptions, there could be upside.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Andrew Baum with Citi. Your line is open.

Andrew Baum

Analyst · Citi. Your line is open.

Thank you again for taking the time to walk through the CF math. My question is, I mean, everything that you explained is math that we, and I’m sure others on the call, have done previously, yet the share price, I think much to your frustration, is not reflecting what many think it’s worth, which seems to suggest that it’s not really the CF concern that may be driving it, it’s more a fundamental lack of belief in the future IR bearing any reflection to the historic one. Perhaps you could talk to what are the factors that you think about could be contributing to the underperformance of the stock, and aside from the buyback, is there anything you can do, apart from deploying capital and prosecuting your business and hoping that the market reflects it at some point? Many thanks.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Yes, I’m going to ask Chris to actually talk a little bit more broadly about the big market opportunity in front of us, but I think--I just want to remind all of you of another important thing that has occurred with Royalty Pharma that is fairly unusual, which is that we have a massive, massive shift in the shareholder base from the legacy shareholders we had and were our partners for 20-plus years when we were private, to the new current shareholder base we have. A lot of the investors we had in Royalty Pharma that grew with us and supported us and were incredibly loyal over more than 20--really, 24 years, since ’96 to 2020, were kind of individuals, family offices, many of which when they invested were people I actually approached and they trusted in us and the business model, but then the shares went to second and even third generations, and they were split in many of those investors groups into many different hands. Also, there was a very large component of investors that were foundations, endowments like Harvard Management Company, Columbia University endowment, Boston University - many of that nature, some foundations like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others. We go public in June of 2020 and many of those investors, having been in the stock for over two decades and having achieved very, very significant value creation, have sold their shares, and specifically the endowments and foundations. We went from them viewing us as a manager that they could allocate capital to, and actually did so - every time we raised money, they would invest more because of the very strong performance, to now becoming a stock. As you know, university endowments are not stock pickers - that’s not their business. We don’t fit…

Chris Hite

Analyst · Citi. Your line is open.

Sure, thanks Pablo, and thanks for the question, Andrew. We just need to continue to execute. We see the opportunity in front of us. We’ve talked a lot historically about the overall R&D spend in the sector between profitable large pharma and the needs of emerging biopharma, as well as the R&D spend and the fragmentation of the sector in terms of R&D spend by governments and not-for-profits. All of that leads to our increasing opportunity set, and I think Pablo did a nice job on Slide 23 where we talked about increasing our capital deployment goals to $10 billion to $12 billion over the next five years - that’s a 55% increase from our initial target at IPO. We’ve actually announced transactions since 2020 for a total transaction value of over $10 billion, which is three times greater than what we had done in the prior three years. We see the enormous opportunity set in front of us. We think the market is growing in the sense of their understanding of how royalties can be a component of their capital formation, and we’re extremely excited about the future and we just need to continue to execute.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Umer Raffat with Evercore. Your line is open.

Mike DiFiore

Analyst · Evercore. Your line is open.

Hi guys, this is Mike DiFiore on for Umer. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Two for me. Again, thanks so much for the math on how different sales scenarios could play out with respect to the CF royalty streams. Two questions for this. Why include this slide now - I mean, this has been a debate forever. Is Royalty Pharma perhaps not as confident in the integrity of these future royalty streams? The second part to that question is that in the 50% to 75% conversion scenario, you’re running the scenarios at a higher sales base. How confident are you in that $13 billion estimate, because our math implies a little bit more shortfall than the $200 million to $300 million that you are calculating. Then I have a follow-up, thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Sure, thanks for the question. The reality is that we’re very confident, very, very confident on our legal position and we’re going to obviously do whatever it takes to stand behind the contract and the confidence we have. The reason we decided to actually lay out this as clearly as possible is because we have heard from many investors, and this goes a little bit to the question that Andrew had also, what are investors missing, but we had been hearing a lot from many investors when we talked to them in conferences or in one-on-ones, that there is a lot of investors that are sort of--they see the stock and they see it as a very attractive way of investing in life sciences. They see the current levels where it is trading now and, again based on different metrics, as a very attractive investment, but many of them remain on the sidelines because they feel that this CF situation could be an important downside or headwind. After hearing that over and over again, we said, it seems like we need to clarify this and really make it very clear, explain how we believe that the downside is honesty very minor, and when you look at a business where we think--you know, we forecast that we’ll get to about $4.7 billion of revenue by 2030 based on our 10%-plus guidance, when you look at that swing in revenue of $200 million to $300 million, it’s really, really minor on a business that should have revenues of $4.7 billion. We thought clarifying all of this was really important. Related to your comment or question about the $13 billion, we do see that as a real possible scenario - that’s why we’re putting it forward, if not we wouldn’t, just based on the current dynamics and the whole CF market. But maybe Terry would want to add some additional perspective here on your question.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Yes, I can elaborate a little bit on the $13 billion. This has been a franchise that has consistently outperformed quarter-in and quarter-out. Patient numbers have ended up being bigger than people thought, uptake has been really strong, and as they’ve continued to move to younger and younger age groups and expand geographically, the growth has been really consistently ahead of expectations. Then the last point is just Vertex themselves have talked about over 6,000 patients that had previously dropped out. We think that’s low hanging fruit for this new triple, and so when you add all that together, we do feel like $13 billion or more is very realistic, and that’s why we put that number out there.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Steven Scala with Cowen. Your line is open.

Steven Scala

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Thank you. I have three questions, but they’re all brief. Based on what GSK reported, Trelegy sales actually beat in Q2, yet Royalty Pharma royalties missed at least our estimate. Was there some sort of adjustment in royalties in Q2, perhaps one-time? Second, this is picky, but the $200 million to $300 million delta in the worst case for the CF franchise, my recollection was that this previously was a $200 million delta. This is a modest change, but curious what changed - I assume just better than expected franchise growth, but please clarify. Then lastly, Pablo, in your summary of Royalty Pharma’s accomplishments since the IPO, I don’t think you mentioned that you raised guidance in the majority of quarters since that IPO. As you reflect back on that time since the IPO, what have been the biggest drivers to this outperformance and to what extent will they inflect going forward? What’s interesting is your business really doesn’t lend itself to beats and raises, yet you’re pretty good at it, so just wondering what you think the drivers have been. Thank you.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Of course. Terry, do you want to take the first two questions regarding Trelegy, and then maybe also the $200 million to $300 million, and I’ll come back to the last bit.

Terrance Coyne

Management

Yes, sure. Steve, on Trelegy, I think it’s just a tiering issue. The royalty resets at the beginning of the year, and so the first quarter sales, which is second quarter royalties for us, are oftentimes going to be at a lower tier, and that tiers up throughout the year, so to the extent that maybe some people had flat rates throughout the year, that would probably explain why that looked a little off. But we still feel really great about the Trelegy investment - it’s performing really well, and it’s probably just sort of a royalty tiering issue. On the question about the $200 million to $300 million, what we said previously was a couple hundred million. We feel like that’s within that range, so nothing really has changed there. I would say we tried to bookend what we think is a very extreme downside scenario for Royalty Pharma when we talked about 75%, and I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily what we believe internally, so that might also explain a little bit why there’s a difference there.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Related to your question about outperformance, consistent outperformance quarter after quarter of our business, the reality is that we saw that when we were private during more than two decades, how every quarter--not every quarter, but the vast majority of quarters and certainly every year, when you looked at the forecast we had for our business and where the numbers came in, the numbers were better. The reason for this outperformance has been very fundamental or very important for our business, that we have consistently been able to invest in the top products marketed by the top companies in life sciences. You can look over more than two decades, we’re getting close to three decades and how in every cycle of innovation, we have been able to invest in the leading drugs that are driving great outcomes for patients and drugs that are transforming diseases. When you do that consistently and the drugs obviously are marketed by the best companies, those drugs are the ones that outperform. Maybe when you look at a big company, that doesn’t happen, but because we’re able to select the top products of the top companies, and we have many of them, that has resulted in very significant outperformance. Another really important characteristic of our business that’s super-super unique is this ability that we have to add blockbusters to our franchise every year. Years ago, we did this analysis, looking at the ability of big pharmas and big biotechs and then smaller biotechs of adding blockbusters to their businesses, and it’s limited. Every three to five years, when you look at big biotechs like a Biogen or a Celgene, that would add one blockbuster at a rate of every three years, every five years, and big pharmas maybe a little bit more, a lot through…

Steven Scala

Analyst · Cowen. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

I show no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Pablo for closing remarks.

Pablo Legorreta

Management

Thank you Operator, and thank you to everyone on the call for your continued interest in Royalty Pharma. If you have any follow-up questions, obviously please feel free to reach out to George Grofik and our IR team. I think I’ll just finish to say that myself and the team are incredibly excited about our business - I already mentioned that, and we feel really good about our situation with CF, which we believe has been a headwind. We just thought it was really important to clarify that now and really show the very limited downside to our business when you look at that investment itself, and obviously much smaller when you look at the magnitude of our business at the end of the decade. But thank you everyone for listening to our call.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.